The ‘right’ to drive a car — for citizens only? Opinion

Since when is driving a car one of the fundamental rights of American citizenship?

The question suggested itself over the weekend when The New York Times became the latest news organization to sum up California lawmakers’ moves to, as the headline on the paper’s page 1 article put it, give “expanded rights to noncitizens.”

Among the new laws in question are those expanding rights to serve on juries, serve as election poll monitors, practice law, pay tuition at in-state rates and apply for driver’s licenses.

The first two of those — jury and poll-monitor duty — now will be open to legal permanent residents as well as citizens. The rest will be available to undocumented immigrants too. The controversy over much of this is understandable. Americans cherish (or should cherish) our legal and democratic political systems. And there is at least a superficial contradiction in charging lower, in-state tuition to people who are in-state illegally.

A Republican political consultant was quoted saying: “My question is, if not driver’s licenses, not juries, not in-state tuition — what is it that should be left for people who are citizens of this country?”

Uh, right. Let non-citizens drive, and before you know it they’ll have the right to eat, walk, mail a letter, jump in the air and, having jumped in the air, come back down.

A letter to the editor of the Daily News last week suggested that if people who came into the United States illegally want driver’s licenses, they should be required to begin the citizenship process when applying for the license. Presumably they’d love to have that option.

Let’s narrow the debate over AB 60, the bill that restores the ability of undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, to whether it will achieve its backers’ goal of improving safety by making more people who are driving anyway prove they know the rules of the road and can operate vehicles safely. We think so, but some disagree.

Let’s not make this about some imagined right of citizenship and thereby trivialize a grand institution. (Citizenship, not driving.)